It’s surprising that The Devil Wears Prada has taken 20 years to get a follow-up, especially after the whip-smart 2006 satire grossed an impressive $327 million and quickly became a pop culture phenomenon with audiences clamouring for more. Two decades later, director David Frankel’s long-awaited legacy sequel answers the question: Was it worth the wait?
Picking up twenty years after the first film ended, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) is now an award-winning journalist pursuing stories with real intent. When her career is dissolved, Andy is sought out by Runway CEO Irv (Tibor Feldman) to bring her gravitas to the quickly fading fashion publication after some controversial press. With the reluctant help of the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Miranda (Meryl Streep), art director Nigel (Stanley Tucci), and their former colleague Emily (Emily Blunt), Andy sets out to restore Runway’s credibility and steer it into the digital landscape.
Frankel, re-teaming with scriptwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, recaptures the fizzy, fun banter between the characters. The quartet of Hathaway, Streep, Blunt, and Tucci all slip back into their roles effortlessly, and there’s a real joy in seeing these spiky and idiosyncratic character dynamics again. The film, however, has little else to offer other than that. Journalism’s evolution into the digital space and its effect on print media is such an intriguing conceit, but the script refuses to interrogate those themes in any meaningful way. It poses questions about making viral content that is still honest and engaging, yet feels wispy in its resolutions. The whole plot is built on a series of implausible, thinly connected coincidences and contrivances (largely involving Lucy Liu and Justin Theroux’s divorced billionaire influencers), and the story forces these characters together in a way that feels disingenuous and uninteresting.
When the conflicts do rear their head, they all come out of left field and without much tact or reason. And the solutions to these problems are all coincidental as well, so the film lacks the dramatic heft and narrative suspense the original had with its more streamlined approach. That film felt real in its depiction of climbing the career ladder in New York and how obsessive that can be. Whereas this time, there’s no good reason for these characters to be in each other’s lives and doing what they’re doing, which frustratingly makes much of the film’s 119-minute runtime feel like it’s meandering.
Still, there’s fun to be had with seeing Hathaway, Streep, and Blunt butt heads again. The fashion is, as expected, incredible, with lavish production and costume design. It’s glitzy, sparkly, and the glamour feels fitting of a Devil Wears Prada title. Much like he did the first time around, Tucci grounds the whole thing with a much-needed humanity, and the ensemble is rounded off with some spritely new additions in Kenneth Branagh, Simone Ashley, B.J Novak, and a fun, caricature turn from Theroux. Considering the first film was about leaving the superficial behind to pursue something real, it’s somewhat disappointing, then, that these characters have finally returned with such mediocrity. After all of these years, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is the thing it never wanted to be: a legacy sequel that exists purely for the brand recognition rather than being a story worth telling. Fun? Sure. Worth the wait? Maybe not.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in cinemas from May 1st, 2026.
The Devil Wears Prada 2
Summary
Glitzy, sparkly, and the glamour feels fitting of a Devil Wears Prada title – and it’s great to see Hathaway, Streep, Tucci and Blunt back together on screen again.
